Bloomin' Progress

Well, all but one of my expensive 'sticks' has bloomed.  When I say sticks, I mean the fruit trees I bought and have been anxiously waiting for them to flower and greenify.  The exception is one raspberry cane, which definitely just looks like a prickly stick.

A few of the trees have flowered and well as growing leaves, and I wonder if they'll actually produce one or two edible cherries, apricots, nectarines, apples, or greengages this year?  I proved last year with dear little Figly (the Genoa Fig tree) that I'm unable to pull off fruit in a tree's early formative years simply to encourage growth, so they definitely have to be edible. 

In regards to the artichokes mentioned in the previous post, since I last blogged I've had 5 more smaller artichokes to play with.  They're wonderful boiled for 20mins in salted water and then eaten with oil and balsamic.  Just watch out for the boiled baby slugs curled up in the 'petals'.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I'm having a few image transfer issues.  I hope to post photos of the trees and get back to more illustrated blogging soon.  What's the fun in just words?!

In two years time I'll be rolling around drunk on fruit

The rest of my fruit trees went in today.  I didn't plant them though.  I'm slightly ashamed to say that I hired a gardener to clear the weeds up the back of my garden and he put in the fruit trees at the same time.  The garden[weed]beds had been there since I moved in last September and the ground is prohibitively dense and hard to dig.  Many of the weeds had mega roots and I destroyed two gardening forks in an attempt to clear them.  In the end it seemed like a happy compromise to get someone stronger than me to dig them up.

The decided order in the end (from the left) Granny Smith/Pink Lady Apple; Stella/ White Cherry, Moorpark Apricot, Goldmine Nectarine (white), and Santa Rosa Plum.  The decision was mainly due to sunlight.

 From the other side, with the rhubarb in the foreground

The Greengage/ Goldendrop Plum tree planted yesterday